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An Introduction to Shmem/IPC in Gecko

We use shared memory (shmem) pretty extensively in the graphics stack in Gecko. Unfortunately, there isn’t a huge amount of documentation regarding how the shmem mechanisms in Gecko work and how they are managed, which I will attempt to address in this post.

Firstly, it’s important to understand how IPC in Gecko works. Gecko uses a language called IPDL to define IPC protocols. This is effectively a description language which formally defines the format of the messages that are passed between IPC actors. The IPDL code is then compiled into C++ code by our IPDL compiler, and we can then use the generated classes in Gecko’s C++ code to do IPC related things. IPDL class names start with a P to indicate that they are IPDL protocol definitions.

IPDL has a built-in shmem type, simply called mozilla::ipc::Shmem. This holds a weak reference to a SharedMemory object, and code in Gecko operates on this. SharedMemory is the underlying platform-specific implementation of shared memory and facilitates the shmem subsystem by implementing the platform-specific API calls to allocate and deallocate shared memory regions, and obtain their handles for use in the different processes. Of particular interest is that on OS X we use the Mach virtual memory system, which uses a Mach port as the handle for the allocated memory regions.

mozilla::ipc::Shmem objects are fully managed by IPDL, and there are two different types: normal Shmem objects, and unsafe Shmem objects. Normal Shmem objects are mostly intended to be used by IPC actors to send large data chunks between themselves as this is more efficient than saturating the IPC channel. They have strict ownership policies which are enforced by IPDL; when the Shmem object is sent across IPC, the sender relinquishes ownership and IPDL restricts the sender’s access rights so that it can neither read nor write to the memory, whilst the receiver gains these rights. These Shmem objects are created/destroyed in C++ by calling PFoo::AllocShmem() and PFoo::DeallocShmem(), where PFoo is the Foo IPDL interface being used. One major caveat of these “safe” shmem regions is that they are not thread safe, so be careful when using them on multiple threads in the same process!

Unsafe Shmem objects are basically a free-for-all in terms of access rights. Both sender and receiver can always read/write to the allocated memory and careful control must be taken to ensure that race conditions are avoided between the processes trying to access the shmem regions. In graphics, we use these unsafe shmem regions extensively, but use locking vigorously to ensure correct access patterns. Unsafe Shmem objects are created by calling PFoo::AllocUnsafeShmem(), but are still destroyed in the same manner as normal Shmem objects by simply calling PFoo::DeallocShmem().

With the work currently ongoing to move our compositor to a separate GPU process, there are some limitations with our current shmem situation. Notably, a SharedMemory object is effectively owned by an IPDL channel, and when the channel goes away, the SharedMemory object backing the Shmem object is deallocated. This poses a problem as we use shmem regions to back our textures, and when/if the GPU process dies, it’d be great to keep the existing textures and simply recreate the process and IPC channel, then continue on like normal. David Anderson is currently exploring a solution to this problem, which will likely be to hold a strong reference to the SharedMemory region in the Shmem object, thus ensuring that the SharedMemory object doesn’t get destroyed underneath us so long as we’re using it in Gecko.